Introduction
Suicide is when a person takes their life knowingly or intentionally. Death is one gravest consequence of suicide (Douglas, 2015). The following is paperwork covering the following aspects of the crisis of lethality.
The dynamic of suicide and the moral dilemma
Although there are several incidences where people who attempt suicide have been able to come out of it alive, it remains one highest cause of death, especially in the western world. However, there are several others that although have not been based on much, may be just as crucial. One of them is the effect that this act may have on the family of the person that commits the action. They are left not only bereaved for losing a member of the family, but also about whether they may have been the reason their family member took his life. The state also stands to lose when a person dies from committing suicide. Because of this is that in many cases, they use resources such as drugs for the action, which costs the government (Liem et al. 2011).
Other than this, there are several follow-up investigations that the state has to take part in to ascertain that this person indeed committed the action himself, and it has not been stage-managed by someone else. For this reason, although the will to die is the person’s decision, in the event of their survival they are convicted of the crime. There are times however that they are found to have some somewhat psychological issue that made them resort to the act. Therefore, they may sometimes face counseling or rehabilitation (Luoma et al. 2014).
Characteristics of suicide
There are two key attributes of suicide. The first one is that a death occurs. This is of course except in the incident that the person survives. Here it will be known as attempted suicide (Bertolote and Fleischmann 2015).
The second characteristic is that the initiative to die had to come from the very person who is committing suicide. It means that a person is often not influenced by any outside source to commit the act but by internal forces. There are times that the actions of other people may be the reason they want to die, but they will still have to be the ones to start it (Douglas, 2015).
Characteristics of suicidal people
The first characteristic of people who resort to suicide is that they are going through insufferable psychological pain. This means that whatever is bothering them does not seem to have any other solution and thus they see it best to take their lives to end the suffering that they are going through (Bertolote and Fleischmann 2015). The second characteristic is that these people are trying to ensure that they are no longer conscious. They would like to end their consciousness for the same reason that has been named above; they no longer want the pain that they are feeling. That is why most of them will have often tried many other ways of ending their consciousness such as taking sleeping drugs. They reach the point of suicide because they realize that when they wake up from sleep, their problems are often still awaiting them.
The third characteristic of these people is that they are hopeless. They may have tried to seek solutions to the issues they are facing from other avenues, but these may have failed to yield any fruit. As a result, they think that if they take their lives, they will no longer feel hopeless because they will be incapable of feeling (Douglas, 2015).
These people also often have constructive thoughts (Luoma et al. 2014). This means that their spectrum of solving problems has often narrowed. These people are not capable of thinking beyond their noses or taking part in a problem-solving process that may be of benefit to them. Their narrow-mindedness which may have been caused by depression may handle them thinking dying is the only solution. Ambivalence is another characteristic of suicidal people. It means that; they are sure in their hearts that this is what they want and that it is the right decision to make. However, usually at the backs of their minds, they keep wishing that there could have been another simple solution to their problem that did not involve death (Liem et al. 2011).
Similarities between homicide and suicide
The first similarity is that a death occurs. In both cases, there is a person whose life is taken away. The difference is that for suicide the perpetrator is also the victim while for homicide these two are different individuals (Liem et al. 2011). The main similarity that connects these two kinds of murder is the motivation behind each of them.
Conclusion
It has been stated that suicide is a somewhat introverted form of homicide. A person that can take his life is also capable of taking the life of another person. The main component is that a person in both cases is willing to take a life. So the difference is that he will only look at taking his life as the solution while in the other case the person is driven towards taking that of another person.
References
Bertolote, J. M., and Fleischmann, A. (2015). A global perspective in the epidemiology of suicide. Sociology Reviews.
Douglas, J. D. (2015). Social Meanings of Suicide. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Liem, M., Barber, C., Markwalder, N., Killias, M., and Nieuwbeerta, P. (2011). Homicide–suicide and other violent deaths: An International Comparison. Forensic Science International, 207(1), 70-76.
Luoma, J. B., Martin, C. E., and Pearson, J. L. (2014). Contact with mental health and primary care providers before suicide: a review of the evidence. American Journal of Psychiatry, 159(6), 909-916.